PublicNuisanceWire.com

A petition filed in Adames, et al. v. Beretta USA Corp could reopen the case of a teenage boy fatally shot by his best friend eight years ago. In 2001 13-year-old Billy Swan jokingly fired a Beretta pistol at his friend, having first removed the clip and not realizing a bullet remained in the chamber. Swan’s parents sued Beretta, claiming the manufacturer failed to warn consumers that removing the gun’s magazine does not insure total safety. Later that year, the Illinois Supreme Court threw out the case.

In an exclusive interview with Public Nuisance Wire, Jeff Dissell, firearms instructor and former Florida state chairman of the Friends of NRA, argues that the current lawsuit ignores federal law.

PNW: Who is really to blame for the accidental slaying in this case?

DISSELL: As a firearms instructor of many years and of many disciplines, the root cause of this accident (and it was merely a terrible accident) is obvious, but requires courage to accept. First, the fact that the child was unaware that the mere removal of a magazine from a Beretta 92 series pistol does not disallow the firearm from firing shows a clear ignorance that could have been easily dispensed with by even the most fundamental training by the owner, David Swan. I have personally trained literally thousands of men, women and children in the safe and proper use of firearms, and to my knowledge, not one of my students has ever been involved in an accidental shooting of this kind.   

Secondly, the lack of knowledge demonstrated by the child as to the safe use of a firearm, whether or not a magazine is inserted, shows that if any training was provided the child it was fundamental at best -- and therefore potentially dangerous at worst. A basic tenet of firearms safety taught in virtually every firearms class -- from that of a basic nature to those taught to military and law enforcement -- is that a firearm is never pointed at anything that one does not wish to destroy, with absolutely no exceptions. If that simple concept had been followed, the results of this incident would have been embarrassing at worst. That the child even pointed the firearm, loaded or unloaded, at another child demonstrates an elemental lack of even the most basic firearms training.

PNW: What could have been done to prevent this tragic accident?

DISSELL: Responsibility for the storage of loaded firearms cannot be that of a firearms manufacturer, since there is no practical way for a manufacturer of any firearm to monitor the safe use or storage of its products. Firearms ownership, even as a law enforcement tool, implies that the owner of that firearm will accept the responsibility for removing any practical possibility that the firearm could be accidentally discharged, causing injury or death to another human being. In this case, the chain of custody was broken and multiple basic rules of firearms safety were violated by someone who was supposedly trained in the safe and proper use of a firearm by a public entity -- i.e., a law enforcement agency -- and who then should have been fully aware of the fact that the pistol in question could fire minus its magazine. It seems highly unlikely that at some point during academy or range training the fact that the Beretta 92 series of pistols could fire without a magazine in the magazine well was not a topic of discussion. If not tactically, then for safety reasons alone.

In point of fact, it could be argued that the public entity for whom David Swan worked could have logically concluded that he continued to store a pistol at home and therefore should have provided effective and continuing home firearms safety training for its personnel, which it apparently did not.

PNW: Does Beretta bear any responsibility for the unsafe use of its product?

DISSELL: Testimony given by Billy Swan and his father, David, are at odds regarding the lockbox in question. Even so, it remains the legal obligation of the firearm owner, not the manufacturer, to provide a safe and secure environment for young children. If the box was locked as suggested by David Swan, the child obviously had access to the key and, therefore, to the pistol. And if the box was unlocked, the pistol was still accessible to Billy. In either case, the result was the same and the tragic result was the accidental discharge of a firearm, causing the death of Joshua Adames. In this case, the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of The United States must be respected and the laws of the State of Illinois upheld.

The suggestion by expert witnesses that Beretta should incorporate some sort of magical mechanical device into its Model 92 firearms design is supremely impractical, given that many thousands of the Beretta 92 series pistols are used throughout the world every day by civilians, law enforcement and the military personnel without incident and therefore there is ample evidence that the Beretta 92 series pistol is exceedingly safe as marketed. In the real world of firearms, a magazine disconnect or any other mechanical device is never, under any circumstances, to be relied upon as life-saving. Only firearms safety training, which is portable and can be utilized with any firearm manufactured, can be depended upon to prevent firearms accidents such as this with certainty.

It should also be noted that while there are a handful of semi-automatic pistol models available that do in fact disable a firearm when the magazine is removed (the fabled magazine disconnect), there is running contention in the professional firearms training community as to whether or not such a feature actually places the lawful operator of a pistol with such a feature in harm’s way. While such a feature may at first glance seem to be a good idea, in a self-defense or law enforcement situation a pistol that has become unintentionally disabled by virtue of a dropped magazine could prove to be fatal to its lawful operator. In the long run, gun locks, magazine disconnects and loaded chamber indicators have never been a substitute for safety knowledge, nor can they ever be. The sad truth is and always will be that if Billy Swan had been properly trained in the rules of gun safety and if the owner had provided a truly secure place to store the gun in question, Joshua Adames would almost certainly be alive today. To try and place blame upon the firearms industry is ludicrous.    

PNW: Is there an agenda behind the reopening of this case?

DISSELL: One has only to inspect the first few pages of the court document to see who is involved as representation for the plaintiff. Wherever the words “Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence” are found, it can be suggested with some certainty that the action, no matter what the venue, is simply a political effort to undermine the Second Amendment rights of Americans. The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence has a long history of carrying out a calculated and systematic vendetta against firearms, firearms owners and firearms manufacturers for decades, even to the extent of using a tragic case such as this one as a tool to further an otherwise failed political agenda.

Legally, the law is clear and historically attempts to hold firearms manufacturers liable for the misuse of a product in the hands of the ignorant or a criminal have been rejected, as they were in this case. The pursuit of legal redress for the unfortunate misuse of a product with a long history of safe use around the globe seems to be little more than an attempt to create an exception that can be further exploited in the future to the sole benefit of the Brady Center To Prevent Gun Violence.